The truck did a lot of lurching and swerving and smelling like gasoline and dog fur. It was hot under the tarp. My knees burned on the metal truck bed. My hand rested on something greasy. I could feel David breathing. I wondered if he was scared, but when we bumped around a corner he put his hand on my back and kept me steady.
We stopped. The truck rocked as the driver’s door opened and slammed shut. After a minute, David stuck his head out and looked around. Then he flung back the tarp, and we climbed out and dusted ourselves off.
There’s this old comic—the only time I ever saw Halifax in one—about Johnny Canuck battling infamous war criminal Rudolf Hindor, who was using brain serum and radio magnetic rays to control the minds of his private army and threaten the world. I mean, Threaten the World!!! Hindor’s army was stealing planes and ships from along the coast, and let me tell you, when you’re standing there in the shipyard you realize just how hard a time they must have had of it.
Rising above us was a gigantic ship that filled the whole sky with steel. I just about fell over trying to see all the way to the top. The ship was sitting in an enormous hole in the ground—the dry dock, David called it. Way down in the hole, workers were leaning out from wood scaffolding, tickling the ship’s belly with paintbrushes. The air smelled like paint fumes and hot metal and salt, and a strong breeze off the water snatched at my breath.
“Better start with the main building,” said David. We made our way towards it, ducking behind oil drums and a pile of large steel beams. People noticed all right, but no one stopped us. David watched for his father. And I watched for Johnny.
“Tell me again what your cousin looks like,” said David.
Across the yard, a huge crane was lowering a boiler into the keel of a new ship. The ship was built only to about where the first deck would begin. It looked like the world’s biggest gravy boat.
“I’d say Johnny’s about seven feet tall,” I said. “He has night-black hair and sky-blue eyes.”
“Are you kidding me? Seven feet tall? You think maybe he just seemed that way ’cause you were shorter the last time you saw him?”
I thought back. “Maybe he’s six-foot-something.”
David said something under his breath. Might have been “Lord love us,” but then a sick look came over his face.
“What the heck are you doing here?”
Soon as I turned around, I knew it was one of David’s brothers. Gerry, maybe. He had the same black curls and the same mean look in his eye. His chin jutted out when he was mad, just like David’s did now. They were like two sides of a mirror, only a bendy mirror that made the Gravedigger look a lot smaller.
David said, “We’re trying to find somebody.”
“How’d you get in?”
“Walked in.” His brother crossed his arms. David held his stare for a second then looked away. “Snuck in.”
“You’d better sneak back out again before Dad sees you.”
“We got business here.”
“Oh, yeah? What kind of business?”
David didn’t say anything. His brother looked at me. “This one of the Norman girls? Key-rist, Dad is going to kill you, and then her dad is going to kill you all over again. You get her out of here. This isn’t no place for a girl.”
David toed the ground for a second. He tapped my elbow. “Let’s go.”
Something I knew about David by now was that he had three walks. A stomp, a shuffle, and when he was pleased with himself, like a bear up on its hind legs—sort of light on his heels, and I can’t describe it any better than that. When he suddenly turned and walked back to where we’d left his brother, it was a five-alarm stomp. I couldn’t hear what David said to him, but when he finished he crossed his arms and looked like he’d grown an inch.
His brother called me over. “All right. What’s he look like, this cousin of yours?”
David nudged me.
“He’s about six-foot-something and has night-black hair and, um, regular blue eyes,” I said. “His name’s Johnny Kellock. Have you seen anyone who fits that description?”
“I almost fit that description.”
“He’s not near as strong-looking as you.”
“No, don’t imagine. Okay, fine. I’ll keep an eye out. Now, you two better go. I’ll take you out.”
David started to say something, but his brother cut him off. “You weren’t here,” he said.
David’s brother—who was Gerry—drove us out in a van. Thankfully, no one stopped him at the guardhouse to check for rabbits. After climbing the long set of stairs back up to street level, then the steep hill you had to face no matter where you turned off Barrington, my legs were burning like crazy. If David hurt as bad as I did, he didn’t say. It was clear enough he was mad at me for getting him in trouble. Maybe Gerry would keep an eye out for Johnny. But maybe the Gravedigger’s helping days were through.
I was so absorbed in my thoughts, I didn’t notice David step off the sidewalk, and I walked headlong into a group of sailors going the other way. On summer nights, the downtown was filled with sailors in their bell-bottoms and round caps. Dark blue edged in white. The American sailors wore white uniforms with blue trim and looked like they’d stepped right out the movies. They’d come off their ships and mingle with the local girls.
Young Lil once got caught sneaking out after curfew. She was wearing her girlfriend Marianne’s pink satin skirt with a crinoline and her mouth was covered with thick red lipstick. Martha and me watched the showdown from the stairs. I thought Young Lil looked like Marilyn Monroe—except for her brown hair and the way she spit a little when she yelled back at Mama—but Martha whispered that it was cheap to wear your effort on your face like that. Young Lil was grounded for a month. I wondered what punishment I’d get if Mama found out that, in just one afternoon, I’d gotten tangled up with sailors, a Frenchman, and a couple of Micks.
Before everyone was married off and busy, us Normans were always going downtown to take in a movie or just get a hamburger or an ice cream and walk around. Other times we’d take Freddie or Cecil’s car out to Queensland Beach for fish and chips, or to the Chicken Burger in Bedford, where we’d take turns choosing songs on the jukebox. You always stayed out as late as you could in the summer, and even when you got home, after dark, you’d stay out on the porch a while, hoping the heat would be let out of the house by the time you went in. I don’t know how it happened, but all day the house seemed cooler than the outside and then—blam—the outside was cooler than the house. If there’s such a thing as a lousy scientific miracle, I think that’s it.
When we got back to Agricola Street, David went straight home. Mama, Norman, and Martha were sitting on our front porch. Norman had his feet resting on his lunch pail.
“That was a quick swim,” Martha said. “Did David have fun? He forgot to come for his clean shirt.”
“I guess so.”
My mind was going all over the place. I hadn’t remembered to wet my hair, and would there have been time enough for it to dry, and could I run my towel under the hose without Mama noticing so I could hang it up on the line?
Norman was looking across the street. “You and David have a fight or something?”
“Oh, yeah. A big one.” That part at least felt like it was true.
“You’ll work it out,” he said.
“Sure they will,” Mama said. “If Rosalie can just learn to keep her mouth shut.”